A NEW MATEIUAL FOB GARDEN WALKS. 285 



more richness in their design and management, we should ere 

 long see different requirements for horticulture. 



This is no Utopian affair. I have seen the articles about 

 which I am writing already made and highly finished, and could 

 name the places where you can see the work done ; but this is 

 not a disputed point, and I hasten to the marl hexagon and marl 

 edging slabs — articles that ere long must find their way into our 

 gardens. Our ancestors had floors with a wisp of straw under 

 foot ; from that refinement has reached its present high pinnacle 

 in-doors, and now we see encaustic tiles, with beautiful heraldic 

 devices ; and I would fain improve that part of our gardens 

 which lies in the immediate vicinity of our houses, by having 

 beautiful smooth, clean, hard pavement, well edged with the 

 same, in place of dirty gravel and grass edging, and that for the 

 reasons above stated. I have had samples of marl hexagon laid 

 down, to try their effect, strength, and durability, and I have the 

 written testimony before me of respectable parties who have made 

 a similar trial of them. I have counted the cost, and beg leave 

 to lay before the Society the following statement respecting them. 

 The size of the hexagon is 4^ inches across — that is to say, the 

 diameter of the circle within which the hexagon is inscribed is 

 4i inches ; the size of the edging-slabs 9 inches. They are 

 capable of resisting tlie most intense frosts, are of a fine straw- 

 colour, and next to the nether millstone in hardness. The cost 

 of a fine terrace paved and edged with this elegant article 

 amounts to' a mere trifle when compared witli hewn stone. I 

 measured a handsome hewn stone terrace that had been very 

 much admired, as forming an important feature in the garden 

 where it was constructed, and found that if it had been laid with 

 these it would have cost about 70/., or something under the cost 

 of a labourer's cottage ; and just mark the dimensions, and think 

 of a promenade 300 feet long, 7 feet 6 inches wide, of a fine 

 warm tone of colour, and fit for traffic of any kind, and in all 

 weathers. 



The cost of gravel in certain localities is very great, a ton of 

 the best coal and a ton of gravel being the same price at the 

 water's edge, and when carted are seldom under a guinea. Now 

 a gravel walk 300 feet long, 7^ feet wide, and nine inches deep, 

 would cost at this rate about 65/. for the gravel outside the 

 garden door, and the wheeling in and laying down of 62J tons 

 of gravel are serious items to be added to the 65/. All the 

 expenses attendant upon gravel form such an enormous tax u^on 

 the garden, that nothing but the evidence of figures will con- 

 vince any one that such a robber is about his premises. After a 

 good night's rain I have found the gravel from the sloping walks 

 and from the higher levels far away from the paths where I had 



